Havana (12 page)

Earl wondered where the marines were. According to the schedule, the congressman would drive to Guantanamo today for a two-day inspection tour, under escort from armed marines. But when he arrived at the embassy that morning, he could see no marines except for the two young men standing at parade rest at the gate.

He walked inside to find the duty NCO in his embassy security office just down the main hall from the visa section.

“Sergeant,” he asked, “where're the jeeps? They ain't here yet?”

“Gunny, the escort was canceled. I don't know why. We were alerted when we came on at 0600 there wasn't going to be any escort.”

“Christ. Any idea what smart guy thought that one up?”

“No, Gunny.”

“Tell me, what do y'all keep in the embassy strong room?”

“Mostly shotguns. Them old short-barreled 97 Winchester pumps.”

“Maybe Teddy Roosevelt brought 'em over. Could I check one out?”

“Well, Gunny, there's paperwork. You have to get the ambassador's written permission. Arms are only allowed out of the strong room on his authority. But I guess if the congressman wants something, all he has to do is ask, that's the way it works.”

“You know what? I think you're right about that.”

He went back to the motor pool, where Cuban workers were just finishing a nice wash and wax job on the congressman's black Cadillac, while an American supervisor watched from a chair.

“You check it?” he asked the man, a senior motor pool mechanic.

“I checked it yesterday,” said the man.

“Well, check it again. I don't want no hoses pulling loose or fan belts popping in some goddamned jungle, you hear me?”

“Hey, I don't work for you. I work for the State Department.”

“You must be from the navy at one time.”

“Twenty years. Retired a bosun's mate, as a matter of fact. Say, what's it to you?”

“Figured. Anyhow, check the goddamned car,” said Earl, leaning forward and fixing his own NCO glare on the man, “or I'll have the congressman ship you off to the North Pole. Check the tires too, and the oil. I want that car shipshape.”

Bitterly, the man set about to do the work, and Earl watched as he ran over the car, digging through the hood, pulling the dipstick, tugging the fan belts, doing a fair once-over, even if his attitude was all nasty and dark.

“Good work, son,” Earl finally said, checking his watch. At last, he saw Lane approaching.

“Mr. Brodgins?”

“Yeah, Earl, what is it?”

“Sir, what happened to the marine escort? The plan I saw, we were going to have two jeeps of marines with us the whole way.”

“The congressman changed his mind on that. He thought it was better to keep a low profile and not associate Americans with a military occupational force.”

“Mr. Brodgins, I—”

“Earl, I swear you are a load every single day, aren't you? One thing or another, every single day. Earl, it's the congressman's decision. He makes the decisions, don't you understand?”

“I do understand that. I'd feel safer with some nice young privates in khakis or class A's, all trim and proper looking. It's a deterrent—”

“Earl, you know the boss. He may want to have a stop somewhere. For a rum drink. You know his proclivities, too. You do know them.”

“Yes, sir. Then can you ask the ambassador to sign the paperwork so I can take a shotgun out of the strong room? I'll keep it down low, but that's some firepower it'd be nice to have along, just in case.”

“Earl, I don't think so.”

Earl got all heated up. His temper flared, his breath grew sharp, his eyes went narrow and hard.

“Goddammit, I am not asking, Brodgins. If you want security on this little trip, you let me make the security decisions, you hear? If something happens, I'm stuck with a goddamned handgun and that's it.”

“Earl, what on earth are you expecting? This is a vacationland paradise for god's sake.”

“We're going to be miles inland on dusty little roads where no Americans don't hardly go. Why don't we fly?”

“He doesn't want to spend a lot of taxpayers' money on an air trip. The trains here are terrible. A boat would take too long.”

He left Earl standing there. Earl spat in the dust. He looked up and saw the ex–bosun's mate eyeing him, and expected a smirk. But instead the man came over, as if a new page had been turned.

“Okay, I got her squared away, Gunny. Sorry about your runin. These political guys can be a tear in the rigging.”

“They sure can.”

“Look, I was at Guantanamo for a few years before the war. I'll tell you what's going on here. If this congressman has a hard-on big as everybody says he does, he's going to Gitmo City first. There's more whorehouses there in two blocks than in any two square miles of Havana. It's a navy town, after all.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“So you may have to bang some more boss pimp skulls before you're done. I'd be on my toes.”

“I get all the number-one jobs, don't I? Have you traveled the roads down there?”

“Yeah. The roads are okay. No problem. And you should be all right all the way down the island. I'd watch out as you get close to Santiago. It's very mountainous down there. And be careful in Ciego de Avila province. It's mostly empty marshlands. They don't see Americans very often. Dark, jungly, you know. Sort of like the Pacific jungles.”

“I was there for a little while.”

“Then you know what I'm talking about.”

“I got some idea. Thanks, pal. Sorry for the harsh words earlier.”

“Forget it, Sarge. Hey, I know you were in the Pacific. I know what medal you won. But I can tell, it ain't gone to your head.”

“It ain't my way.”

He winked at his new pal and headed back into the main building, to get familiar with the route via maps.

Speshnev first began to hear of it in the barber's chair, his face swaddled in towels full of steam heat. He'd come to this place on the morning of every day—one in four, usually—when he'd had to slide by a casino at night, to pick up some of his improvised operational budget at the blackjack tables.

So he wasn't thinking of much except numbers. The numbers had to stick like glue, never falling out, always in place, as if on a big board which he could scan instantaneously if necessary. But it was beyond thought, as most games were to him. He had a game mind; his imagination thrilled at the boundaries, the rules, the strategies, as he sought to know, always, how to crack it.

So he was dillydallying with that so-necessary state when, seemingly from nowhere, he heard a single phrase in Spanish.

“They say it will be big.”

Sometimes he missed these things, as the Spanish he'd learned was pure Castillian, and the Cubans spoke more briskly than anyone in that motherland. They also pronounced their Z's and C's without the Castillian lisp, hard and brisk, like Andalusians. Worse still, their diction was frequently lazy and unclear, as if they had picked up the jangled rhythms of the Americans, particularly in the way they dropped their S's and sometimes even the entire last syllables of words.

But he heard it clearly: “They say it will be big.”

“What?”

“I don't know.”

“They always say that.”

“No, this time it is real. It is said that young man is associated with it.”

He whispered the name to his companion, and Speshnev could not make it out, but he could tell it was a two-syllable name with the emphasis on the first syllable.

It could be. Possibly, yes, it might be.

But then the conversation stopped, and when the towels came away, the shop was empty. The two had left already.

“Sir,” he asked the barber, as that man lathered him up, then stropped the razor, “I am provoked. Those two men? Their conversation? Did it have some meaning?”

The barber eyed him suspiciously, even though he came in so often.

“I don't know what you're talking about. I don't listen to what idle gossipers say.”

“Ah, I understand,” Speshnev said, and then endured torture as the man shaved him over the next ten or twelve hours.

Well, of course, it was but ten or twelve minutes, but it dragged so for the Russian he began to shudder with anticipation toward the end.

“Sir, if you don't relax, I will cut you badly.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered.

At last finished, he rose, paid, and exited quickly. Where to now? Possibly the open-air market at Plaza de la Catedral, a gathering spot for other idlers, as well as self-styled radicals and reformers. As he rushed down the crowded narrow crinkle that was the Emperado, he had the ridiculous impression that everywhere people were muttering the same thing.

Finally, he could stand it no longer, and headed into a large cafe, well short of the Catedral. It was crowded and as he bumped along, trying to reach the espresso behind the bar, he heard snippets.

Finding a man who also appeared to be alone and listening, he said to him, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“You know…about
it.
They say tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. I heard this afternoon late, if not early in the evening.”

“Possibly such things cannot be planned with precision.”

“I wouldn't know anything about that. But if it doesn't happen today, then the rumors, you know, about the speaker tonight, they will be ridiculous, no?”

“I suppose. I just heard that fellow talks but does nothing.”

“But if he is involved, then maybe it has moved beyond nothing.”

“He is a good speaker.”

“His radio speech when Chiba died”—
Castro!
—“it was good, but nothing ever came of it. Possibly this time it will be different.”

But Speshnev was already gone.

 

Where was the young bastard? Of course, not in any of his usual haunts. He wasn't in the park of San Francisco, where the chess players gathered, indulging in his pastime. He wasn't in any of the coffeehouses around the hill that was crowned by the university, or on its glorious splurge of steps, or among the yakkers in the law school cafeteria. He wasn't anywhere except…it was hard to believe, hard to understand, but could he actually be…
working?

So Speshnev rose in the rotten old apartment building, entering through a dark corridor, wending up a dark stairway, following his way around the balcony engulfing the narrow courtyard, reading the numbers on the battered pastel doors, until at last he came to his destination.

He knocked.

After a time, there came rustling noises, the sounds of a baby stirring, and finally, the door cracked but a bit. An exceptionally pretty face glared at him suspiciously. What a beautiful young girl!

“Ah, is he here?”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“A friend. He knows me. We talk in the park.”

“He is writing his speech.”

“For tomorrow?”

“For tonight, he says. Can you come back?”

“It's important that I see him.”

“And why?”

“Young lady—Maria, isn't that it?”

“Mirta. But how could you know? He never takes me anywhere.”

“He talks of you often.”

“Ha! He
never
talks of me. I do not exist for him, except when he is in a certain mood. He—”

Before she sailed off on the seas of inconsolable bitterness, Speshnev reseized the momentum.

“Mirta, you do not want policemen visiting, do you? That would be even worse. Arrests, beatings, the scandal. Think of the parents, the family honor. Therefore it is important that I see him.”

Mirta continued to eye him.

“Where are you from? You speak like a Spaniard.”

“I am of Spanish experience, yes, extensive. That is where I learned the language. I am not one of these excitable Cubans.”

“All right. But if he yells at me, I'll be so mad.”

“He will kiss you.”

“That I doubt.”

He walked through the apartment, not that it was far to go, and heard the baby stirring restively, saw the fight between the woman's tidiness and the man's contempt for tidiness—that is, books in piles and gewgaws in rows, in continual battle.

He arrived at a back bedroom where, in his flaccid, shirtless condition, his eyes shielded by thick glasses, Castro scribbled away furiously by the bald light of a lamp whose shade was somewhere else.

He looked up, saw Speshnev, and did not pause even a second to remark on the incongruity of that man's presence in his home, a phenomenon which had not occurred before and was not remotely conceivable to him.

“Listen to this, and tell me what you think,” he said. He cleared his throat. “‘History will absolve us. Our cause is that just. We seek not profit but freedom, not mastery but equality. Freedom, however, cannot be won without sacrifice.'”

“Idiotic,” said Speshnev. “You are a young fool who will get yourself killed.”

“No, no,” Castro said. “I think not. This is a very fine opportunity and I must seize it. It will win me followers on a grand scale. In grand scale is power. And so it is that—”

“What are you talking about?”

But the weirdness of the situation suddenly made itself known to the young man.

“What are you doing here? How did you find me? I never told you where I lived. It's supposed to be a secret. I don't even know who you are. I don't know your name.”

“You know perfectly well who I am. You know why I am here, so names are not important. What is important is to get you to the next stage. Now, everywhere I go, I hear big things are coming and that they involve you. I insist that you tell me what all this is about.”

“Opportunity. An alliance—your idea, incidentally—has produced a wondrous chance. Listen to this, and tell me I am not wise to grab this with everything I have.”

He then proceeded to narrate the previous day's adventures, the shrewd council of El Colorado, the raid on the casino, the democracy of giving the people all the money, his own ability to stand forth in the moment and take command and—

“Oh, you fool! You blind, stupid young fool! God, you are so lucky. There might even still be time.” Speshnev looked at his watch, saw that it was nearly eleven.

“I don't…. Why are you angry? This is a wonderful opportunity to embarrass the Americans and the regime, without any harm being done. It redounds with honor and glory. It speaks to a glorious future. It—”

“Stop with your pap. How many men did you see in Colorado's cellar.”

“Why, four or five. I wasn't really paying attention.”

“Of course you weren't. Lesson number one:
always
pay attention. How many, idiot? Four or five?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, but you don't understand why, do you?”

The young man looked at him. Speshnev could see confusion on his face.

“Well, I—”

“Well you nothing. You could not possibly rob a big American casino with five men. There are too many hidden guns. It would be a slaughter. The American gangsters do not yield on such things easily, and they
always
have their revenge. Their whole culture depends upon revenge. No, El Colorado could not conceive of such a thing.”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“‘I hadn't thought of that.' Idiot! Fool! Is your brain a raisin?”

He clenched his brow, then hit himself in the head with his fist.

“Think!
Think!
” he ordered himself. “Five, you say. With machine guns.”

“Thompsons. Like the police.”

“The same. Hmmm. A bank? But he doesn't need money, he has money? What?
What?
”

“I don't—”

“Four or five men, machine guns. What else?”

“Negroes. Possibly foreign.”

“Foreign?”

“Darker than our negroes. Almost black. You never see that here, especially five times over. A dark one, yes, once in a while, but not five of them in one—”

“Did you speak to them?”

“I saluted them. They didn't respond. I thought it odd.”

“They didn't understand you. Of course, now I see. You are right, at last. They
are
foreigners, and can't stay with the quickness of the Cuban tongue and its lazy ways of working. Foreigners. Poor, desperate, dark men, brought in to…well, to what?”

“Rob?”

“No.”

“Kill?”

“Yes, you would use such men to handle killing chores. They would be expendable, courageous, nameless. Perfect. But who? El Presidente? No, don't be absurd. He's too well protected. What about some ambassador? But for what reason—”

It suddenly dawned on him.

“Of course.
Of course!
”

But if his wisdom illuminated him, it did not animate him. Instead, a terrible weariness set over him. He had so much to do, so little time, so few weapons. Melancholy seeped through him.

“What are you talking about?”

“The American congressman. They'll kill him and his party for violating the inviolate rules of the brothel. Of course; it's pimp's honor at stake. And from his point of view, there's no negative attached. It'll make the government look bad, it'll terrify the American government, but it won't enrage and engage the American crime syndicate.”

“Perhaps it will send a message.”

“Fool. You have no instincts at all. More likely it'll produce invasion.”

“Mother of God,” said Castro. “And I—”

“And you have gone all over town affiliating yourself with it. Your mission is now to disaffiliate yourself. These stories you have spread must now be denounced as lies and slander. Go even to the police and tell them that El Colorado is the one.”

“I—”

“Meanwhile, I must stop this. Do you have a machine gun?”

“No, of course not.”

“Hmmm, I need a machine gun fast. Now where does one get a machine gun?”